Build Mobile Applications Using App Inventor for Android

By introducing this software Google's aim is to bring Android software development to the masses. The software is intended to make it easy for people to write applications for its Android smart phones.

The App Inventor works only for phones running Android software. It is a web-based tool. However, it requires a small software to be downloaded on to your computer. When making programs, the phone must be connected to a computer with a USB port. You will also need a Gmail account to access the tool.

Using this tool, one can create any kind of application from a basic game to a very complex application. The applications that you build can also store data. The best part about this tool is that it does not require you to have any programming knowledge. Instead of writing code, you could use the visual tools to design the app and use blocks to specify the applications behavior. The App Inventor comes with a drag and drop interface, where in a creator can drag and drop blocks of code - shown as graphic images and representing different smart phone capabilities- and put them together. This is similar to snapping together Lego blocks. The result is a mobile application that can easily run on any android smart phone.

The tool provides code blocks for everything. For example, you can find blocks to store information, blocks to perform actions under certain conditions, or even blocks to talk to services like Twitter, and Facebook.

Types of Applications

The tool provides access to a GPS-location sensor. So, you can build location aware and map-based applications. For example, an application to track your vehicle movement, or an application to highlight the interesting places in town.

Using this tool, you can build applications that can communicate with the phone's functionality. You can use this application to send a "love you" text message to your loved one automatically.

You can also build applications that can interact with the web using App Inventor. So, you can create applications that can interact with popular websites such as Twitter, Amazon, or Facebook.